My tender heart

Yesterday my heart was very tender. i was doing some deep healing work with a younger part of myself that needed love and healing. Needed permission to have this big wild heart. To love. To reclaim this vastness of love she had. That she closed down. I was guided to watch the new Cinderella movie (i love how the universe picks a movie perfect for the age/themes I am healing up). And as the movie starts and it's talk of the power of kindness. The POWER. the magic that is part of kindness. I am in tears. This part of me that needed this type of hug today. To have this part of me valued, loved and desired. And I love that this is the theme of this movie. It's her heart. Her kindness is her magic. Is her power. It's how she creates beauty in her life and in others. Her passion for nature, for animals. How she keeps showing up in love. How she speaks her heart and that is what is so alluring about her. Her expressing her divinity and truth. And it brought great judgment against her from her Stepmother who had her own issues to work out. And derision from her step-sisters who didn't particularly appreciate kindness and love but preferred parasols and lace and tearing each other down.

"Would who she was, who she really was be enough, there was no magic to help her this time. This is perhaps the greatest risk any of us will ever take. To be seen as we truly are."

It is enough. We are enough. The gifts of our powerful hearts. Our tenderness, our kindness is so needed in the world. And more and more people are coming to appreciate it, desire it and want it for themselves.

Other quotes that hit my tender 16 year-old heart. 'Have courage and be kind' 'They treat me as well as they are able,' 'just because it's done, doesn’t mean it what's should be done." And so understanding creating your own world with the mice, the geese upstairs in your magical attic, singing your song because that makes more sense than the world below. So thank you universe for guiding me to this movie. For helping heal up my 16 year-old heart so I can take this next step in reclaiming the vastness of my heart. The pride in this. My beauty. My power. My gifts.

And I love that during this moment of reclamation and healing, a friend called to tell me he thought I should pitch Love Capers as a tv show. That the world needs to see this type of unconditional love in action. And while I don't know about tv I do believe the world needs to see more joyful love, to experience it amongst family, friends, strangers. So yesterday felt like a day where the universe was saying to me- there is so much power in your heart Kim, go out and use it. Go be you in the world. Get out of the attic. Go sing your song. And I felt like my 16 year-old heard it and felt it and healed. So then I went to REI full of pride and delight in my next steps- to head out into the world as love. I bought new trekking shoes...for these feet need to be protected and cared for too while taking my precious wild heart out into the world.

Release of writing

What a beautiful day. Today I released my journals, notebooks from my workshops, all the paper elements of my transformational journey these past few years. And this was so much more challenging to come to peace with then the memorabilia last night. These notebooks feel like my legacy, my proof that my journey matters. The words on those paper feel like my deepest communion with the divine, with my soul. They feel like my most profound wisdom and knowing. My most delicious expression of a truth that I show so few people. My rawness, my wildness, my irreverence, my sacred knowing. And I have kept these notebooks out of a fear, a desire, a hope that in keeping them they would be evidence of the worth of my journey. A book. A guide for others. And yet they started feeling like more of a weight, an anchor, to an old version of myself that doesn't need to be revisited- this new self is ready for freedom, for true wild living. Without having to dive into a notebook to find self love, or self acceptance, or self worth, or someone else's wisdom to guide me. To honor me, to love me. To cheer me on. I am grateful for every teacher, every guide, every communion with my soul that offered solace, direct, comfort, expansion, reverence- that resulted in words on paper for my brain and heart to sort through. I am grateful for every word written on those pages. Some with dried tears on them, some with chocolate stains. Pieces of napkins, hotel paper, bus passes, airline tickets with a jotted note. Holding on so tight to this to somehow believe that this journey- with this evidence in these pages, is proof. Proof that I am worthy of the gift of such a sacred journey of reclamation. I remember what Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in Eat, Pray, Love (ironic I know). That what if this journey is just for her, just for her and no one else. to come back to herself. to live her life. And in this moment. I know the words and energies in those notebooks are ready to be transmuted and alchemized so I can simply BE. So I can create life from this current place. Not from spending time revisiting notes from 4 years ago. So tomorrow I take these notebooks to be shredded, to free myself and this energy. And what is left is LOVE. and I no longer need to carry these notebooks with me, to know they are sitting in tubs in my home to know that I am LOVE and I am LOVED. and that is the most incredible gift I can imagine giving myself. The freedom and wildness of love.

Boxes of memorabilia

Tonight it was time. Time to dive into the boxes of Memorabilia. Tubs of memories. Of report cards. Yearbooks. My ASB Gavel. My Girl Scout sash. Reports. Essays. Childhood art. A letter to a high school crush declaring myself - thankfully never sent! Letters to and from me. Email from friends I'd printed out. Cards. Remember when people sent cards? 23 years of cards from my friend Beth. Such a gift of love. And almost all of it is heading to the recycling bin in the morning or the shredder (fear not dear friends- all correspondence will be shredded!). In the genius book, 'The Magic Art of Tidying Up', the author talks about how these items have served their purpose and holding on to them, keeps us from being present, from embodying who we are and having space for who we are here to truly be. I did keep my baby book, a few letters, notes from my mom and dad, one or two pieces of childhood art. The ones that made me smile. That brought me joy. And the rest. Well the rest- its time for it to move on. To take on new energy, as new things. I've carried those tubs with me for 20 years and its time to lighten the load. I can't tell you how delicious it felt to lift one tub up, filled 1/50th of the way! my back, my heart felt it all. So here are to those memories who helped me become who I am today and here's to the space for the new.  Some of the hardest things to release? My writing- some college essays I wrote on racism, culture. On the bra- when it's evolution was based on technology (new fabrics etc) versus cultural (madonna, trends). A birthday card my dad sent me from our Dog that's passed on- with cute little dog print stamps. These are still in a pile...I need another night with them and we will see what tomorrow brings! 

Tomorrow: photos. egads.

If I'm just visiting Earth for a few years, what would I do?

During my morning meditation a thread from yesterday's outing popped up again. "What if I am just visiting Earth for say 90 years..what would I do? How would I treat myself? What would I create for myself?" And these feelings flooded me, feelings that I would surround myself with kindness, gentleness, joy, beauty, new experiences, intimacy, being in my body- being held, caressed. I would use my body to travel the world, my senses to breathe it in, taste the flavors of the world, hear music/language of the world, see the sights, the people, the colors, the textures and touch- the trees, the water, the mountains, humans, cuddle with puppies and babies. 
I would nourish this magical body with foods and water that invigorated it so I could feel strong, vital and relaxed. 
I would have epic forgiveness, epic boundaries
I would ask those men out I haven't, kiss the ones I wanted to. Some women too. why the hell not those luscious creatures!
I would spend less time making photo albums and more time creating new, living new. 
I would spend less time sifting through/organizing my past and be present to what is. 
I would call in more love than I could possibly imagine. 
I would watch so much less TV and live more of my own life.
And the beauty is- all of these things are happening and this morning was another round of upleveling how I choose to create and live my life. A reminder that I have a choice. That while these cultural norms have been presented to me - I can choose to say no. No thank you Spanx, I'm going to allow my curves to show, No thank you hours spent in isolation in my apartment, I'm going to walk the world. No thank you abuse, bullying and intolerance- I choose Love, respect and kindness. NO thank you judgment and shame, I choose self-respect and self-worth. No thank you sarcasm, passive aggressive communication, silence I choose vulnerability and authenticity. No thank you data/analysis, I choose my heart and my wisdom. No thank you processed foods, I chose foods from mother earth. No thank you constricting clothes and shoes that hurt my feet, I choose pleasure and embodiment. No thank you dating rules, I choose play, kissing booths and showing up. No thank you propriety, I choose to ask the contractor to zip up the back of my dress and tell people they have food in their teeth. No thank you treating mother earth like something that is only here to serve us, when we are here to serve and honor mother earth. No thank you to diets when my body is telling me how to nourish it and honor it.
Yes to living boldly, lusciously, deliciously, engaging my senses, my sex, my wisdom. Yes to living in turn on, drenched in beauty, joy, playfulness, wildness and communion. Yes to cannon balling into this thing called life. Yes to flirting my ass off with the hottie Chris Messina Look-a-like guide at the grand canyon. Yes to taking the kissing booth from burning man out into the world. Yes to dancing in the world. Yes to heels that I can dance in. Yes to clothes that make me want to melt into another. Yes to flow and working for the divine. Yes. Yes. Yes. As Marvin Gaye would say "Let's get it on."

My wild wants out

Yesterday I dropped off 12 boxes of 'Stuff': mixing bowls, measuring cups, art supplies, towels, glass food storage containers, bedding, vases...so many little things that make up a home. I felt such relief at getting rid of this 'stuff'
and then a few hours later i felt this wave of deep emotion move through me.

All of this stuff, it was love. Some of it was long ago wedding presents I realized to my shock. Someone who took the time and money to help J and I create a home together. Measuring cups. And those measuring cups lived in Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Seattle. They were used by us, by my tenants, and then by me. I used them to make thanksgiving pies for our families, our friends and then years later, post divorce on a rainy thanksgiving in Seattle I spent a beautiful day alone and stayed up until 3am baking. Using these measuring cups, using this love. Using resources from Mother Earth to feel loved and to create love.

So yesterday, it wasn't just stuff dropped off. It was a big part of my history, of love, it was these parts of myself that had tried SO SO hard to be a wife, to want children, to have a beautifully decorated home on Queen Anne, to want to stay in one place and thrive. To want to be a CEO, have a business card with a title that people respected. It was this part of me that had tried to be loved, believing this is who I had to be, to be loved. It was this part of me that adapted to believing this is what it took to be loved.

When it isn't.

My wild wants out. It wants to not have so much stuff right now, it doesn't want to be a wife in the way that was laid out to me, it never wanted babies and felt such intense shame around that. What kind of woman am i, if I don't want children? Who am I if I don't want all these things around me that declare, this is who I am.

What if in my rawness there is more to me than being surrounded by all these old ideals of who I had to be to be loved?

And so yesterday when I dropped off those things, I was also releasing myself from those values, from that agreement I had made so long ago to adapt, to domesticate, to tamp down my wild, to deny it, to shove it aside, to make it wrong. It was a huge moment of reclamation. The physical declaration of a commitment to myself to live my truth. For me. Here are these things that no longer serve my highest good. That are no longer my truth, perhaps they never were. Thank you for them. Thank you and now I trust they will go to a good home and be loved. And I trust I am being ever so gently held as I continue to come back home to my beautiful, sacred self.